But they were rough in those times! They fairly reveled in
gold, whisky, fights and fandangoes, and were unspeakably
happy. The honest miner raked a hundred to a thousand
dollars out of his claim a day, and what with the gambling
dues and the other entertainments, he hadn't a cent the
next morning, if he had any sort of luck. They cooked their
own bacon and beans, sewed on their own buttons, washed
their own shirts -- blue woolen ones -- and if a man wanted
a fight on his hands without any annoying delay, all he had
to do was to appear in public in a white shirt or a
stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated. For those
people hated aristocrats. They had a particular and
malignant animosity toward what they called a "biled
shirt."

In his sketch entitled "The Luck of Roaring Camp," Mr. Bret
Harte has deftly pictured the roughness and lawlessness of
a California mining camp of the early days, and also its
large-hearted charity and compassion -- for these traits
are found in all true pioneers. Roaring Camp becomes
blessed by the presence of a wandering, sickly woman and
her little child -- rare and coveted treasures among rude
men who still yearned in secret for the mothers and sisters
and children they loved and cherished in other days. This
wanderer -- the only woman in Roaring Camp -- died, and the
honest miners took charge of the orphan little one in a
body. They washed it and dressed it and fed it -- getting
its garments on wrong end first as often as any other way,
and pinning the garments to the child occasionally and
wondering why the baby wasn't comfortable -- and the food
these inexperienced nurses lovingly concocted for it was
often rather beyond its capabilities, since it was neither
an alligator nor an ostrich.

But they meant well, and the baby thrived in spite of the
perilous kindnesses of the miners. But it was manifest that
all could not nurse the baby at once, and so they passed a
law that the best behaved man should have it for one day,
and the man with the cleanest shirt the next day, and the
man whose cabin was in the neatest order the next, and so
on. And the result was, that a handsome cradle was bought,
and carted from cabin to cabin, according to who won the
privilege of nursing that day -- and the handsome cradle
made such a contrast to the unhandsome furniture, that
gradually the unhandsome furniture disappeared and gave way
for a neater sort -- and then ambitious male nurses got to
washing up and putting on clean garments every day, and
some of them twice a day -- and rough, boisterous
characters became gentle and soft-spoken, since only the
well-behaved could nurse the baby. And, in fine, the
lawless Roaring Camp became insensibly transformed into a
neat well-dressed, orderly and law-abiding community, the
wonder and admiration of all the mining world. All this,
through the dumb teaching, the humanizing influence, the
uninspired ministering of a little child.

THE SEX ON EXHIBITION

In those days men would flock in crowds to catch a glimpse
of that rare and blessed spectacle, a woman! Old
inhabitants tell how, in a certain camp, the news went
abroad early in the morning that a woman was come! They had
seen a calico dress hanging out of a wagon down at the
camping ground -- sign of emigrants from over the great
plains. Everybody went down there, and a shout went up when
an actual, bona fide dress was discovered fluttering in the
wind! The male emigrant was visible. The miners said:

"Fetch her out!"

He said: "It is my wife, gentlemen -- she is sick -- we
have been robbed of money, provisions, everything, by the
Indians -- we want to rest."

"Fetch her out! We've got to see her!"

That was the only reply.

He "fetched her out," and they swung their hats and sent up
three rousing cheers and a tiger; and they crowded around
and gazed at her, and touched her dress, and listened to
her voice with the look of men who listened to a memory
rather than a present reality -- and then they collected
twenty-five hundred dollars in gold and gave it to the man,
and swung their hats again and gave three more cheers, and
went home satisfied.

EXORBITANT RATES

A year or two ago I dined in San Francisco with the family
of a pioneer, and talked with his daughter, a young lady
whose first experience in San Francisco was an adventure,
though she herself did not remember it, as she was only two
or three years old at the time. Her father said that, after
landing from the ship, they were walking up the street, a
servant leading the party with the little girl in her arms.
And presently a huge miner, bearded, belted, spurred, and
bristling with deadly weapons -- just down from a long
mining campaign in the mountains, evidently barred the way,
stopped the servant, and stood gazing, with a face all
alive with gratification and astonishment. Then he said,
reverently:

"Well, if it ain't a child!" And then he snatched a little
leather sack out of his pocket and said to the
servant:

"There's a hundred and fifty dollars in dust, there, and
I'll give it to you to let me kiss the child!"

That anecdote is true.

But see how things change. Sitting at that dinner table,
listening to that anecdote, if I had offered double the
money for the privilege of kissing the same child, I would
have been refused. Seventeen added years had far more than
doubled the price.

TOUCHING SPECTACLE

And while upon this subject I will remark that once in Star
City, in the Humboldt Mountains, I took my place in a sort
of long, post-office single-file of miners, to patiently
await my chance to peep through a crack in a cabin and get
a sight of the splendid new sensation -- a genuine, live
Woman! And at the end of three-quarters of an hour my turn
came, and I put my eye to the crack, and there she was,
with one arm akimbo, and tossing flap jacks in a frying pan
with the other. And she was 165 years old, and hadn't a
tooth in her head. However, she was a woman and therefore
we were glad to see her and to make her welcome.

THE FAMOUS "CEMENT" MINE

It was somewhere in the neighborhood of Mono Lake that the
wonderful Whiteman cement mine was supposed to lie. Every
now and then it would be reported that this mysterious Mr.
W. had passed stealthily through Esmeralda at dead of
night, and then we would have a wild excitement -- because
he must be steering for his secret mine, and now was the
time to follow him. In less than three hours after daylight
all the horses and mules and donkeys in the vicinity would
be bought, hired or stolen, and half the community would be
off for the mountains, following in the wake of Whiteman.
But W. would drift about through the mountain gorges for
days together, in a purposeless sort of way, until the
provisions of the miners ran out, and they would have to go
back home. I have known it reported at eleven at night, in
a large mining camp, that W. had just passed through, and
in two hours, the streets, so quiet before, would be
swarming with men and animals. Every individual would be
trying to be very secret, but yet venturing to whisper to
just one neighbor that W. had passed through. And long
before daylight -- this in the dead of Winter -- the
stampede would be complete and the camp deserted, and the
whole population gone chasing after W. I ought to know,
because I was one of those fools myself.

But it was enough to make a fool of nearly any body. The
tradition was that in the early immigration, twenty years
ago, three young Germans, brothers, who had survived an
Indian massacre on the Plains, wandered on foot through the
deserts, avoiding all trails and roads, and simply holding
a westerly direction and hoping to find California before
they starved or died of fatigue. And in a gorge in the
mountains they sat down to rest one day, when one of them
noticed a curious vein of cement running along the ground,
shot full of lumps of shining yellow metal. They saw that
it was gold, and that here was a fortune to be acquired in
a single day. The vein was about as wide as a curb stone,
and fully two-thirds of it was pure gold. Every pound of
the wonderful cement was worth well-nigh $200. Each of the
brothers loaded himself with about twenty-five pounds of
it, and then they covered up all traces of the vein, made a
rude drawing of the locality and the principal landmarks in
the vicinity, and started westward again. But troubles
thickened about them. In their wanderings one brother fell
and broke his leg, and the others were obliged to go on and
leave him to die in the wilderness. Another, worn out and
starving, gave up by and bye, and lay down to die, but
after two or three weeks of incredible hardships, the third
reached the settlements of California exhausted, sick, and
his mind deranged by his sufferings. He had thrown away all
his cement but a few fragments, but these were sufficient
to set everybody wild with excitement. However, he had had
enough of the cement country, and nothing could induce him
to lead a party thither. He was entirely content to work on
a farm for wages. But he gave W. his map, and described the
cement region as well as he could, and thus transferred the
curse to that gentleman -- for when I had my accidental
glimpse of Mr. W. in '62, he had been hunting for the lost
mine, in hunger and thirst, poverty and sickness, for
twelve or thirteen years. Some people believed he had found
it, but most people believed he hadn't. I saw a piece of
cement as large as my fist which was said to have been
given to W. by the young German, and it was of rather a
seductive nature. Lumps of virgin gold were as thick in it
as raisins in a slice of fruit cake. The privilege of
working such a mine about one week would be sufficient for
a man of reasonable desire. -- Mark Twain